Central U.S. Storms Evolve Into Squall Lines With Damaging Winds Overnight

Overview

• Following Monday's confirmed tornadoes in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri, storms merged into long squall lines that shifted the main hazard to damaging straight-line winds overnight.
• The Storm Prediction Center kept multiple watches active into the night as a line from Iowa to eastern Kansas produced severe gusts, with a low chance of brief tornadoes within the line.
• In Texas, an extremely unstable, moist air mass supported bowing clusters from the Hill Country to the Rio Grande, where Watches 232–233 covered storms that produced 50–56 kt gusts and marginal hail while moving toward the Austin area and the middle coast.
• Flash flooding remained a concern where soils were already saturated, with forecasters citing 1–2 inches per hour and localized 2–4 inch totals from Kansas and Missouri into Oklahoma and Arkansas.
• Farther east, scattered storms across the Ohio Valley and New England brought pockets of damaging wind, though weak wind shear kept most cells short-lived and disorganized.